
Then I shifted to LCD better, higher resolution printers (Phrozen Mini8K, Mighty 12K and Mighty Revo 16K) and since I have returned to flat printing.
I print essentially 1:700 stuff for ships and 1:144 for space launchers.
I own designed kind of "ramps" of generic tiny supports which perfectly support horizontal surfaces and are easy to cut with an ultrasonic cutter without damaging tiny parts.
During first trials I clearly heard the "plop" when the last printed -large- layer separates from the tank film, strainning it for bad. I corrected in reducing the build platform upward speed by a factor 3 and now the separation is silent, smooth and doesn't damage of bend details, even with 10microns vertical resolution.
Now, the strain on the film being very low I took the opportunity to do thinnier supports with contacts as low as 0.2 or 0.12mm, which still do their job but are far easier to cut cleanly.
In addition the film life expectancy has considerably increased.
Of course this increases the printing time by a factor 3... but I use to print at night when I'm sleeping. And here in France electricity cost is 50% cheaper during nights.
Two exceptions, however :
Parts which are long and thin tend to bend the banana way, even some days/weeks after complete UV curing : long hulls, masts, gun barrels, antennae.
The same occured with angled printing and I suspect internal stress between consecutive layers which aren't cured at the same time.
So...
- For long hulls I print them vertically, split in two or three parts. Additionally I always print hollow hulls with 1.2mm thick wall. These hulls still keep a "waterline" plate attached with holes to evacuate liquid resin. This makes kind of Cantilever box structures which remain very stable in time (four years as of today and continuing), save on resin cost and mass resin shrinking (1.4%) during curing.
- For gun barrels, masts, yards, antennae I print them vertically, so every section is printed/cured even and the result very stable. For larger and longer masts I'm successfully experimenting with a longitudinal tiny hole through which I insert BEFORE UV curing a .2 or .3mm steel rod.
Of course, printing vertically implies a longer time, but I can print many more units on the same platform simultaneously.
As far as for me it works very fine.
My two (euro) cents.
Bruno
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